


Do Not Go Gentle

by tinyimplosions



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 20:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11790462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyimplosions/pseuds/tinyimplosions
Summary: Reality strikes at a hospital visit.





	Do Not Go Gentle

**Author's Note:**

> In light of the postal vote we're having in Aussie atm. 
> 
> Set in the distant future (canon timeline), Rindy is off at college, or somewhere else. 
> 
> Probably belongs under plotless angst, if there's a tag for that.

The lights, strobe-like in their haphazard blinking, bleed into the frozen panic of the emergency room. Along with the overpowering smell of antiseptic, it adds to the potent concoction that sends Therese's stomach swirling. 

_The front desk. Where-?_

"Excuse me-"

Cold air spills in from behind. The doors slide open and a cart squeals in, accompanied by a cacophony of shouts, of terse instructions. Therese finds herself crowded into a corner, winded from the whirl of noise and movement. The world is alive and fine while... while Carol... 

She is close to crying again. But with a shake of her head to dispel the thought, Therese grabs onto the arm of a passing nurse. 

"Please. I'm here to see Carol Aird." 

The blankness on the girl's face is infuriating.

"You family?"

"I..." She cannot think of what to say for a long moment. Carol is, and has always been, just Carol. It is exactly that easy and that hard of an explanation. Finally, she manages, "No, I'm not." 

"You're gonna have to wait." 

"Please," she tries again, swallowing down her outrage, which feels a lot like grief instead. 

The girl's lips are a thin, firm line, and in the end, Therese is made to wait three long, excruciating hours. When she is finally led into a room, it's almost as though she has not taken a breath of air in years. Carol - fragile, birdlike, is a tiny form swaddled in a mountain of sheets, still asleep. Therese is suddenly at a lost of what to do. 

In the far corner, the curtain shifts, and Therese finds her purpose. There are windows to be shut to keep the night chill out. But then the curtains shift again, a movement  too sentient and purposeful for an inanimate object, and she realizes - no, it's a _person_.

Her first thought, ridiculously, is that it must be Harge, even though it's been months and months - years, even - since they have last heard from him. Then the figure steps into the light and any shred of recognition Therese might have imagined is exactly what it is - _imagined_. The face isn't familiar but something clicks in her mind and Therese is sure. 

 "You must be Elaine."

"Therese, I presume?"

On closer inspection, she is able to trace out Carol's features on Elaine's face - the familiar blond arch of Carol's brow, her full lips and high cheekbones - diluted, for lack of a better word, though they seem to be. 

"Is she-?" Therese clears her throat and finds she cannot finish the sentence anyway.

"Stable," Elaine nods. "She's stable. The doctor came by earlier to say that she might be asleep for a while yet. The surgery went well but she needs to rest." 

"And you were here the entire time?" 

"Mostly. I was delayed slightly. They managed to discharge her to a room before I arrived or I would have chosen a better room." 

"Right." Therese resists the urge to give the room a once-over. Nothing seems out of place - it's slightly bare perhaps, but she can't imagine how something like, a Basquiat hanging on the wall might improve the situation. "Right, of course," she says, and it suddenly seems as though the past two decades have vanished and nothing has changed after all - her overcoat is scratchy against her neck; the bag hanging off her shoulder a little too worn. Absurd things, really, to be thinking of in the moment. 

 "I didn't realize it was serious enough to warrant ringing me up." 

Neither did I, Therese wants to say. A childish, insolent voice in her head wants to throw a tantrum and yell - _I didn't even get a proper call._ She doesn't want to think about how long she might've been sitting back home waiting for Carol to be back for dinner if a friend of a friend of a friend hadn't been pulling a shift as a paramedic at the scene. 

_Therese, there's been an accident. Have you been informed-?_

"The nurse outside mentioned that's the standard medical procedure here - to call the next of kin," she says instead.

"Oh, no, I didn't mean that," Elaine says. "I knew things weren't going well between them, but I didn't think that-" she pauses, a hesitant expression crossing her face, "is it official?" 

"Official?" 

_What on earth..._

"The separation, of course."

And here there are, once more, back to this - as though a woman's existence might cease altogether without a man attached to it somehow. 

"She- yes, it was official." Years ago, Therese doesn't say. 

"What a pity," Elaine says, shaking her head, and Therese has to bite her lip to keep from a scathing reply. It's better to keep silent, especially knowing there was no going back once she sets off down that rabbit hole. There are too many things she's been keeping bubbling under the surface and this was the worst possible time to begin to bring them up. 

"I suppose I should take care of the bill," Elaine says after a beat. 

Therese stops her immediately. "I'll do it."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to impose-"

"No," Therese cuts her off once again, firmly. "I'll get the bill. But only after Carol wakes up," she clarifies, at Elaine's hesitant expression. "I'll get it once she's awake and settled." 

"That's very kind of you," Elaine says after a protracted beat, and something about the way she says it - perhaps its the oblivious, unsuspecting tone, or the softening of her voice in a manner that brings it that much closer to how Carol sounds - makes Therese want to sob in a manner that is entirely alike and yet apart from how she feels when Carol finally awakens a few hours later.

It is relief and anger; incredulity and pain - all at once. No, there is nothing  _kind_ about the violent maelstrom that has been raging in her chest since she'd first heard about Carol, hurt, on the way to the hospital, going into surgery. Nor in the waiting and the pleading and all the firm, outright no's she has been subjected to the entire night when she has asked to see Carol. 

Therese steps further into the room. There is a seat by the bed, and she takes it. Kindness? No, nothing about this is a kindness, or an imposition, or whatever Elaine chooses to think to justify her being there. 

All of a sudden, the ambiguity of her presence is something to be clarified, immediately and in the clearest terms. The impulse claws up at her with the violence of cornered animal, desperate and yowling to be heard. Her heart is already racing before she speaks.

"No," Therese repeats, aloud this time. "No, it isn't. _I love her_."

And she stays seated there, waiting once more, for Carol to wake up. 

 


End file.
